History
In 1992, local gallery owner Laura Carpenter conceived the idea of SITE Santa Fe, soliciting donations that would eventually total more than $1 million. A third of the collected funds went into the renovation of a railside warehouse into 19,000 feet of exhibition space by New York architect Richard Gluckman. [1]
SITE Santa Fe, curated by Bruce W. Ferguson, [1] was started in 1995 with the goal of hosting the only biennial of contemporary art in the entire United States. For the biennial's first edition, Ferguson and co-curator Vince Varga selected 31 artists, from 13 different countries to participate. [1]
The first of these biennials was launched on July 14, 1995, and ran through October 8, 1995. Over the years, SITE's International Biennial has featured guest curators including Bruce W. Ferguson (1995), Francesco Bonami (1997), Rosa Martinez (1999), Dave Kickey (2001), Robert Storr (2004), Klaus Ottomann (2006), Lance Fung (2008), and Daniel Belasco and Sarah Lewis (2010). Following the success of the first biennial, SITE Santa Fe opted to present exhibitions on an ongoing basis.
SITE Santa Fe also administers grants to local artists and holds ancillary programs in education and development. [1]
In 1997, SITE Santa Fe served as commissioning institution for the United States pavilion at the Venice Biennale. [2]
The seventh biennial, Lucky Number Seven, opened on Lucky Number Seven, opened June 22, 2008. The exhibit, curated by Lance Fung, featured the work of 25 artists from 16 different countries. The exhibition was documented online by a student documentary team from the Media Arts Program at New Mexico Highlands University, the New Media Arts Program at the Institute of American Indian Arts, and other local arts programs. Many community members collaborate with SITE Santa Fe, such as Deborah Fritz, a local curator and gallerist. [3]
In 2011, SITE's leadership set out to reimagine its signature biennial exhibition. SITElines: New Perspectives on Art of the Americas, the first of the reimagined biennials, was organized by a diverse team of curators and featured artworks that explore the many layers of history and culture in the Western hemisphere, highlighting under-recognized points of view. Simultaneously, SITE developed SITE Center, a socially engaged artist residency program that ties the curatorial process of SITElines and outreach programs that foster deeper engagement within New Mexico communities. SITE Center residencies have addressed topics such as cultural differences, Indigenous histories, and incarceration.
In the summer of 2016, SITE broke ground on an expansion and renovation project designed by Shop Architects. After a year of construction, SITE reopened with a new building that increased the museum's capacity to display artwork, host events, and engage with local students.
The Venice Biennale is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of its kind. The main exhibition held in Castello, in the halls of the Arsenale and Biennale Gardens, alternates between art and architecture. The other events hosted by the Foundation—spanning theatre, music, and dance—are held annually in various parts of Venice, whereas the Venice Film Festival takes place at the Lido.
Rosa Martínez is an independent curator, art critic and international art advisor based in Barcelona, Spain.
Inka Essenhigh is an American painter based in New York City. Throughout her career, Essenhigh has had solo exhibitions at galleries such as Deitch Projects, Mary Boone Gallery, 303 Gallery, Stefan Stux Gallery, and Jacob Lewis Gallery in New York, Kotaro Nukaga, Tomio Koyama Gallery in Tokyo, and Il Capricorno in Venice.
The Ben Maltz Gallery at the Otis College of Art and Design was an art space in Los Angeles, California, that closed permanently in 2022.
The Taipei Fine Arts Museum is a museum in Zhongshan District, Taipei, Taiwan. It is in the Taipei Expo Park. The museum first opened on August 8, 1983, at the former site of the United States Taiwan Defense Command. It was the first museum in Taiwan built for contemporary art exhibitions. The architecture is a local interpretation of the Japanese Metabolist Movement, and the building was designed by architect Kao Er-Pan.
Basak Senova is an art curator, writer and designer from Istanbul, Turkey. She lives and works in Vienna since 2017.
Vasif Kortun is a curator, writer and educator in the field of contemporary art, its institutions, and exhibition practices. Kortun served as the founding director of several international institutions, including SALT, Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center, Proje4L, and the Museum of the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College. In 2006, he received the Award for Curatorial Excellence from the Center for Curatorial Studies for his "experimental approach and openness to new ideas to challenge the contemporary art world and push its parameters beyond national or international, local or global developments." Kortun has written extensively on contemporary art and visual culture in Turkey for publications and periodicals internationally. He currently lives in Ayvalık, a seaside town on the northwestern Aegean coast of Turkey.
Nora Naranjo Morse is a Native American artist and poet. She currently resides in Española, New Mexico just north of Santa Fe and is a member of the Santa Clara Pueblo, part of the Tewa people. Her work can be found in several museum collections including the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona, the Minneapolis Institute of Art in Minnesota, and the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC, where her hand-built sculpture piece, Always Becoming, was selected from more than 55 entries submitted by Native artists as the winner of an outdoor sculpture competition held in 2005. In 2014, she was honored with a NACF Artist Fellowship for Visual Arts and was selected to prepare temporal public art for the 5x5 Project by curator Lance Fung.
Peter Sarkisian is an American new media artist based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He combines video projection and sculpture to create hybrid-format, multi-media installations.
The contemporary art institution Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center opened in 2001 and was located on the pedestrian Istiklal Avenue in Istanbul, Turkey. Platform Garanti organized exhibitions; conferences and events; hosted an international residency program; and maintained a library and archive of contemporary art.
America Meredith is a painter, curator, educator, and editor of First American Art Magazine. America Meredith is an artist and comes from a Swedish-Cherokee background who blends pop imagery from her childhood with European and Native American styles.
Naomi Beckwith is the deputy director and chief curator of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. She joined the museum in June 2021. Previously she had been the senior curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Beckwith joined the curatorial staff there in May 2011.
June Yap is a Singaporean curator, art critic, and writer. She is currently the Director of Curatorial & Collections at the Singapore Art Museum.
Sergio Edelsztein founded and curated the Artifact Gallery, the International Video Art Biennale and Videozone, and also founded the Center for Contemporary Art in Tel Aviv, in 1997.
Gia Maisha Hamilton is an applied anthropologist who employs Social Magic™ methodology to investigate land, labor and cultural production while examining social connectivity within institutions and communities. As a model builder, Hamilton co-founded an independent African centered school, Little Maroons in 2006; later, she opened a creative incubator space- Gris Gris Lab in 2009 and designed and led the Joan Mitchell Center artist residency program in New Orleans as a consultant from 2011- 2013 and director from 2013-2018.
Anne Barlow is a curator and director in the field of international contemporary art, and is currently Director of Tate St Ives, Art Fund Museum of the Year 2018. There she directs and oversees the artistic vision and programme, including temporary exhibitions, collection displays, artist residencies, new commissions, and a learning and research programme. At Tate St Ives, Barlow has curated solo exhibitions of work by artists including Thảo Nguyên Phan (2022), Petrit Halilaj (2021), Haegue Yang (2020), Otobong Nkanga (2019), Huguette Caland (2019), Amie Siegel (2018) and Rana Begum (2018). She was also co-curator of "Naum Gabo: Constructions for Real Life" (2020) and collaborating curator with Castello di Rivoli, Turin for Anna Boghiguian at Tate St Ives (2019).
Candice Hopkins is a Carcross/Tagish First Nation independent curator, writer, and researcher who predominantly explores areas of indigenous history, and art.
Janet Dees is an American curator who is the Steven and Lisa Munster Tananbaum Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art. She is also an art historian and expert on African, African-American, and Spanish colonial art, having researched and taught the subjects in positions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Rosenbach Museum and Library, and the Brooklyn Museum.
Eric-Paul Riege (Diné/Navajo) is a fiber artist who creates installations and performance art. Riege believes his work to be an homage to generations of weavers, and considers his work as an immersion in "ceremonies, and rituals, from his past, future, and present selves."
